A New Era For Feedback Management? (Verint Acquires Vovici)

In case you did not catch the news, Verint (a WFO vendor) announced yesterday that they had acquired / entered into an agreement / wants to acquire / whatever legal language applies to the moment you are reading this Vovici (an EFM vendor).

As my friend and Gartner Analyst Jim Davies will tell you, I have been talking about something like this being necessary for both markets for quite some time. If you think through the logic, Verint has data. Lots and lots of data. They collect it from Performance Management, Operations (IVR and several other channels they monitor), and even CRM systems – not to mention HR and other back-office modules. They did not have, other than through partnerships and smaller components like one for IVR, a way to directly address the client and find out what they needed.

Vovici, on the other hand, they address the client. That is pretty much how they get the data (although they are the ones with the tightest integration story among the EFM vendors as well) which then is analyzed to generate insights — and pretty much that is where most of their clients stop. They did not have an easy way to implement the insights they generated.

Bringing these two together marries the customer intimacy data with the operational excellence data and builds a great platform for organizations embarking, or about to embark, in Voice of the Customer and Customer Experience initiatives. If they can put it together, this will be very big (I have to be a skeptic, I don’t want to lose my Analyst license).

I recently wrote that EFM was still alive (still stand behind that) but that the value of EFM deployments quickly decreased if the insights generated were not acted on. The lack of action is, in my research, what sets back slightly more than 2/3 of those that deployed EFM solutions. They don’t find the value they sought because they are too focused on getting the surveys out, collecting the data, analyzing it, and — storing it.

The integration between Verint and Vovici (Verici? Vovint? I will leave that to the tabloids) will not solve the issue of acting on the insight, but will bring two clear value propositions (once it is all done, skepticism is a healthy habit): aggregate more data for deeper and more tactical insights into operations, and bring actionable insights closer to fruition by making some (or most, actually) of the customer service systems available via Verint’s integration to start implementing those insights, improving experiences and closing the loop.

This merger, you know the drill – mandatory skeptical statement, can certainly change the way we do feedback.